ALEXIS HUNTER IN LUXE IMMO MAGAZINE

Alexis Hunter is one
of the best known artists of feminist art, a movement born in
the years 1960/70, of which she is one of the most active representatives
in England. In her photographic series which she often cuts up
in narrative sequences, she questions the look in its sexist dimension
by reversing codes specific to types: a tattoo on a woman’s shoulder,
a manicured hand caressing engines full of sludge, etc. Her very
latest photographic works are on the subject of demonstrators,
Iranian women or “Stuckists” from the name of a group of artists.
With emancipation always in the camera’s objective... Alexis Hunter
was born in New Zealand in 1948. She lives and works in London
since 1972.

interview
with artist and Marie-Émilie Fourneaux

What
is your path to art and especially ‘feminist art’?
My parents emigrated from Australia and they settled in Titirangi,
in the beautiful Waitakere Ranges near Auckland, New Zealand.
Many artists from Europe had arrived there because of the impact
of the last World War on their countries. My twin sister and I
were holding painting exhibitions by the time we were eleven years
old. At art school I studied painting and had an interest in subverting
the History of Art with a series of male portraits, so I was already
a politically engaged artist by the time I joined the British
Artist’s Union in 1972. In the AU Women’s Workshop (a women’s
work group within the Artist’s Union) there were debates on the
ideas of feminist theory and we went on to organise exhibitions
of Feminist Art throughout the 1970s.

What are the intentions of the
photo series you did in the 70’s about? For example ‘Object series’?
The ‘Object series’ was an extension of the portraits of men I
had made at art school, but by 1973 it became a photographic documentation
inspired by the new Feminist theory on film. This project led
to a very large painting in the photo-realist style, which is
now in the Auckland City Museum, and lately shown at ‘WACK! Art
and The Feminist Revolution’ (curated by Connie Butler) that was
first shown at the Museum of Modern Art, Los Angeles. I was interested
in how we look at different mediums, together with the power of
display. The ‘Object series’ is an investigation into the sexism
of the gaze and both the gender and the viewer of the model. As
far as the story behind the third photo series, it goes like this:
When I was in New York, seeing the man I wanted to photograph
lounging in the sun in West Broadway, I wondered how to approach
him. That evening a friend asked if I would like to meet the SoHo
jeweller Alex Streeter... and it was the same person! I posed
Alex on the rooftops of New York, with the World Trade Centre
displayed behind him, representing the phallic desires of American
Capitalism.

The model is naked in the series
‘The Model’s Revenge’. Richard Saltoun, your gallery owner told
me that, although these photographs are about revenge over the
instrumentalisation of the woman as a model, they are no less
attractive to men. He also said that you were conscious of this
paradox. Could you elaborate on that?
I wanted the combination of glamour photography and the gritty
reportage style I used to reveal the tensions between the exhibitionism
of the model but also her anger at always being observed. The
writer John Berger discusses women’s psychological internalisation
of always being watched in his seminal essay of 1973 ‘Ways of
Seeing’. To evoke arousal is intentional - first the gaze is attracted
to the nudity - then the reading of the narrative of violence--
symbolised by the revolver--leads to the shame of looking, or
the denial of consumption. So this frission of looking and feeling
stimulates thinking, hopefully, of the way we consume images.

VALIE EXPORT, another Feminist
artist who is Austrian comes to mind. I 1969 she did the performance
piece “Genital Panic”: the artist walked among the audience in
a porn theatre, her trousers were cut at the crotch and her genitals
were exposed; in her hand, she held a machine gun. If I’m not
mistaken, you discovered her very recently, which is very surprising.
Why is that?
I have only recently seen the image from the performance you mention
in the DONNA Sammlung Verbund (Vienna) Collection catalogue, although
I was aware of her film work previous to that. At the ‘WACK!’
exhibition I was excited to see many works by European Feminists
that parallel the British Movement in the 1970s, but we had no
access to these images then. At that time only the films of French
Feminists were shown at the London Film Co-operative. London Feminists
had far more contact with American artists. I think this was because
we shared the English language and also American artists were
experienced at promoting themselves in the art market, so became
more visible, such as the artist Judy Chicago. The Feminist Art
Movement was truly international and more historical parallel
art works will be uncovered by researchers, writers and curators.
It is also very instructive for galleries such as Richard Saltoun
to show this work at the international Art Fairs. People can see
historical political art for the first time and wonder what other
works there are in the archives of my generation.

What is the subject of the series
‘Approach to Fear’? It seems that you’ve created several small
photographic series grouped under that title.
This series is a collection of narrative sequential photographs
consisting of from five images to a hundred and twenty images
in a sequence, altogether thirty art works, made between 1976
to 1981. They all track the fear of feminism, the change to society
and individuals (both men and women) by the Feminist Revolution.
The images are populist, the aesthetic taken from “glossy” magazines
and television advertising. They are basically ritualistic performances
that are documented, like a witch’s spell.

The photos you have taken recently
seem to be in the style of a documentary, but they are in reality
very composed. What are your current projects?
My most recent photographs have been of street demonstrations
in London, Iranian women fighting fundamental patriarchy and the
radical group of painters called the Stuckists protesting in front
of the Tate Gallery. I have a good idea of the images I want,
and can stand for hours in the freezing cold for the right combination
of organic movement against formal structures to happen. I fit
the protestors into the picture and tell them not to get into
a pose. The wind blows, clouds come over the sun, it rains on
the Stuckist protester dressed as a clown - and then I have my
photograph. So you can see it is quite difficult, for me and the
protestors. They are artists and know this unique image is important
for me.

You also paint. Could you say
a few words about your paintings as well?
In painting I tend to work through one main idea at a time, for
instance in the series ‘Conflict of the Psyche’, I used medieval
symbols of animal chimerae as metaphors for psychological conflict
in the modern world. The subjects are war, climate change, and
economics. Visualisations of these themes are great birds of prey
over cities, chimerae, dragons in burning lakes and so on. I have
recently started a series of French landscapes about the First
World War. Influences for paintings are Artemisia Gentileschi,
Courbet, Van Gogh, Manet, Monet, and Gauguin. I studied the Old
Master techniques and value capturing emotion through technique.
If there was a label for my painting it would be ‘Expressionist
Symbolist’. The painting are still issue-based, but I know the
medium must come first, so the intentions are more obscure that
the photographic series.

Do you think the Feminist movement
is as dynamic as it should be nowadays?
I did despair that Feminism was just a time in history that had
passed but now there is a new generation of Feminists who have
taken to street protests like the ‘Reclaim the Night’ movement
(a feminist group that fights against sexual violence and for
equality of the sexes). The Third Wave, as it is called, is even
more international than before, helped by the internet. People
are generally more educated and have learnt other languages and
that helps us to work together globally.

Do women artists struggle more
for a place in the art world?
The problem is that the trustees of museums are mainly men, and
they collect art made by men. Even though many women work in the
art market, they only provide the art that the male collectors
want. It is a marketplace, like any other. But now, wealthy young
women collectors are demanding art by women artists that they
can identify with. Collectors are realising what a huge influence
the Feminist Art Movement was on the last thirty years of contemporary
art and the interest is suddenly very high. Many works were impermanent,
or have been lost or destroyed, so it is quite rare too, which
gives it value.

Do you think that women artists
in countries where women’s rights are not recognized can follow
in your footsteps from forty years ago? Can art help to change
the world?
What is important is that artists lend their voice to expressions
of freedom in their own unique way. Sometimes an artist’s complex
reading of a situation, which then can be put in a simple pure
image, can help a movement become more popular. Art is an expressive
medium, and if it is used to portray the values of a retrogressive
regime, the art will be stilted and lifeless. That is why fascistic
regimes always kill the poets and writers, and ban contemporary
artists from showing. Just by the making of it, real art becomes
the voice of freedom.

Women artists have played a great
role in Art in terms of performance, of portraying themselves…
Do you agree with that and which artists do you consider the most
interesting nowadays?
The reason why many Feminist artists used their own bodies for
art works was because it was considered exploitive to use another
woman as a model, after all the use of models in art history,
advertising and pornography that had happened before the perception
of sexism. So it did not matter who clicked the shutter - you
had to get naked for your art if you wanted a nude model. Jo Spence's
work is just being re-discovered and as she was a working-class
commercial photographer, she tackled issues about observation
using her own body with great passion and technical facility.
I also respect the work of young photographer Alex Brew. In her
series 'Asking For It’ she contracts the men she finds outside
strip clubs to strip for her camera, which brings up the issues
of sexual observation, the dangers of casual sexual encounter,
and the voyeurism of the observer, whether as a strip-club customer,
female photographer, or us, who are in a gallery looking at these
embarrassed men taking off their vests and underpants. This work
of Alex’s is a contemporary continuation of my ‘Rapport series:
Yes, No, Maybe’; documentation of flirtatious encounters with
strangers in the street started in 1973. In conclusion I think
Feminist Art is the most powerful theoretical movement of Modern
Art, but much has to yet to be discovered.